Water Rights

The strange daily ritual started shortly after Los Angeles water authorities slapped a chain and lock on a wheel controlling a diversion gate on Pine Creek -- the lifeblood of a mountain enclave known as 40 Acres. Locals cut the chain and added a lock of their own to keep the gate open. The Department of Water and Power closed the gate once more and installed a heavier chain. Locals used a cutting torch to sever the new chain. Now there are \o7two \f7locks on the chain.

The battle over Lake Arrowhead water rights boiled down to dueling versions of arcane mountain history: whether the lake built a century ago was intended to be a reservoir for the valley below, or a swimming hole and water source for the local resort community.

A federal judge in Nevada has ruled against environmentalists and Mexican agricultural interests trying to block a U.S. plan to rebuild a leaky stretch of a canal near the border that supplies water to farms in California's Imperial Valley. U.S. District Judge Philip Pro dismissed seven of the eight counts in the lawsuit filed in July by two California environmental groups and an economic development council in Mexicali, Mexico.

If ever you doubted the dictum often attributed to Mark Twain that in the West whiskey is for drinking but water is for fighting over, the New River stands as proof. Long branded the dirtiest river in America, this aquatic nightmare slithers into the United States from Mexico through this border city in the Imperial Valley. Technically, it is not a river but a ditch carrying drainage water the color of pea soup that brims with sewage, animal carcasses and industrial waste from Mexicali.

A federal judge delivered a stinging defeat Monday to the Bush administration over its decision to reduce flows on the Klamath River, which has been blamed for devastating fish kills and putting the commercial salmon season in jeopardy. U.S. District Judge Saundra B. Armstrong of Oakland ordered the administration's Bureau of Reclamation to return more water to the river in dry years to help ensure that the endangered coho salmon doesn't slide into extinction in the Klamath.

A federal judge on Monday gave farmers and environmentalists until the end of the month to reach an agreement that seeks to restore year-round water flows to parts of the San Joaquin River, negotiations aimed at bringing salmon runs back to one of California's most important waterways. Attorneys for both sides told U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton that they have resolved substantive issues to reverse the negative effects of a dam built nearly 60 years ago.

A settlement was reached Friday in an 18-year-old court battle over how much water should be allowed to flow from a dam on the San Joaquin River to restore the salmon that once lived there, attorneys said. Terms of the settlement won't be released, and the agreement won't take effect, until all parties -- environmental and fishing organizations, farming interests and irrigation districts, federal agencies and the court -- approve them, attorneys said.

Three weeks of hearings begin today into a $2-billion plan to take billions of gallons of ground water from wells in the rural, east-central part of Nevada and deliver them more than 200 miles south to the Las Vegas Valley. The plan pits advocates of the economic survival of Las Vegas against proponents of farms, ranches and wildlife in rural White Pine County.

In a tentative ruling Monday that was criticized by environmentalists and Indian tribes, a federal commission that regulates hydropower brushed aside U.S. wild-life agency demands for fish ladders to help dwindling Klamath River salmon runs cross dams that block upriver spawning grounds. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a draft environmental review of the four dams, which are operated by PacifiCorp of Portland, Ore.

In a victory for environmentalists, commercial fishermen and Indian tribes, a federal judge has backed a push by U.S. wildlife agencies for fish ladders over four Klamath River dams blamed for sagging salmon runs. The proposed fish passages would return chinook and endangered coho salmon as well as steelhead and Pacific lamprey to 350 miles of river cut off for more than half a century by the towering hydropower dams.